The Municipal Gallery Revisited

Among portraits of his friends, the old poet asks to be judged by them.

Yeats walks through Dublin's Municipal Gallery and finds thirty years of Irish history hanging round him: scenes of ambush and pilgrimage, Casement at his trial, Griffith, Kevin O'Higgins, a soldier and a churchman blessing the Tricolour. This is not the dead Ireland of his youth, he says, but one the poets imagined. Overcome, he sits down and covers his eyes. Wherever he looks there are images of his own life: Lady Gregory's son, her nephew Hugh Lane, who gathered the pictures, Hazel Lavery. He stops before Mancini's portrait of Lady Gregory, doubting any brush could show her pride and humility, and grieves that her house, where honour had lived so long, has come to its end. He recalls how he, Lady Gregory and Synge believed all art must come from contact with the soil. Finally, before Synge's face, he asks anyone who would judge him to come here and say that his glory was to have had such friends.

Line by line

1. Lines 1 to 8Images of thirty years

   The poem opens as a list of pictures: an ambush, pilgrims by the water, Casement on trial behind bars, Griffith staring "in hysterical pride", O'Higgins, whose gentle look cannot hide a restless soul, and a revolutionary soldier kneeling for a blessing. The paintings are recent Irish history, and the people in them were men Yeats knew or knew of.

2. Lines 9 to 12Terrible and gay

   An abbot or archbishop raises his hand to bless the Tricolour. Yeats speaks aloud: this is not the dead Ireland of his youth but one "The poets have imagined". The phrase "terrible and gay" recalls "Easter, 1916" and its "terrible beauty".

3. Lines 13 to 16A woman's portrait

   He halts before the portrait of a woman, beautiful and gentle in a Venetian style, whom he met nearly fifty years before, for twenty minutes, in a studio. The fleeting meeting, preserved for good in paint, shows how the gallery holds even the smallest fragments of his past.

4. Lines 17 to 24Sinking down, heart-smitten

   Overcome, he sinks down and covers his eyes. Everywhere he has looked are images of his own life, permanent in paint though their subjects are not: Lady Gregory's son, her nephew Hugh Lane, whom he calls the "onlie begetter" of the collection, and Hazel Lavery, whose life and death seem like a ballad.

5. Lines 25 to 32Mancini's portrait

   He turns to Mancini's portrait of Lady Gregory, which Synge called the greatest since Rembrandt. It is a lively, ebullient picture, but no brush could show her mixture of pride and humility, and he fears that time will never again produce such excellence.

6. Lines 33 to 40The badger's lair

   His knees, like a medieval worshipper's, want to kneel. In her and her household he found everything he lacked, and once thought his children might find deep roots there. Now her house has come to its end. He does not weep: no fox can foul the lair the badger kept clean.

7. Lines 41 to 47Contact with the soil

   He recalls how Synge, Lady Gregory and he believed that everything they made must come from contact with the soil, which gave strength as the earth strengthened the giant Antaeus. They alone, he says, brought all art back to that test: the dream of both the noble and the beggar-man.

8. Lines 48 to 49That rooted man

   The last section begins with Synge's own portrait. He is "that rooted man", grounded in the country people he wrote about, with a grave, deep face that seems to have gone beyond the need for human words.

9. Lines 50 to 55Such friends

   He turns to the reader. Anyone who would judge him should not judge by a single book, but come to this hallowed place where his friends' portraits hang, and trace Ireland's history in their faces. His glory, he asks them to say, was that he had such friends.

Themes

Context

The poem was first published in book form in New Poems (1938). The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, now the Hugh Lane Gallery, was the collection Yeats had fought for during the Lane controversy of 1913. He revisited it late in life, a few years after Lady Gregory's death in 1932, and found it full of portraits of his friends and of the men of the revolution.

Many figures are named. Roger Casement was tried and hanged for treason in 1916; Arthur Griffith, spelt "Griffiths" in the first printing, founded Sinn Féin; Kevin O'Higgins, the Free State minister, was assassinated in 1927. Augusta Gregory's son was Robert Gregory, killed in the First World War; her sister's son was Hugh Lane. Hazel Lavery was the wife of the painter John Lavery.

The "onlie begetter" is borrowed from the dedication of Shakespeare's Sonnets, and the badger and fox are, as the poem says, an image from Spenser. The last three sections return to the partnership of Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge at the heart of the Irish literary revival and the Abbey Theatre.

Form

Seven stanzas of ottava rima, rhymed ABABABCC, in long, loose pentameter lines, numbered as seven sections. The fifth stanza's sense spills over into the first line of the sixth, a bracketed aside about Spenser. Near-rhymes such as "Gregory" and "certainly" keep the tone conversational, and each closing couplet gives a firm judgment.